


A Good Doctor is Hard to Find

by FromFarAway



Category: Firefly
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Because they don't really explain Firefly medicine well, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, and I'm not a med student
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 15:58:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2856713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromFarAway/pseuds/FromFarAway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal meets Simon earlier than anticipated when he finds himself in need of medical care on Osiris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Good Doctor is Hard to Find

**Author's Note:**

> So I finally got around to watching Firefly, absolutely loved it, and then spent a week slogging through old live journals and sites hunting down good fics, then ended up feeling like personally writing a fic was necessary for my full enjoyment. It's not very polished, so I hope it turns out okay!

Osiris capital city

Spots formed in front of his eyes as he staggered down back alleys after the other man, one hand clasped to his right shoulder as if to prevent the red stain from spreading any further. This was definitely the last time he was taking an ‘easy’ job on a core planet. The other man guided him into a door that had been left propped open and he sagged into a chair as soon as possible.

The other man paused and turned to him “30 platinum1 for fixing you up here – when’m I gonna get it”

“Half up front now that you proved you could get me into the place, the rest when you bring me back alive to my ship” Mal ground out, tossing out a pouch of coin from his coat with his good hand. “So if you be wantin’ there to be somthin’ left to fix you better start soon, doc.”

The other man snatched up the pouch quickly and weighed it in his hand calculatingly, “Well, the price seems to me awful low, as I got to use specialized equipment and medication that costs money on you”

“You’re gonna be compensated, just gorram fix me”

“We gotta take you down to the first floor to get your wounds cleaned out and patched over”

In less than five minutes, Mal was in a wheelchair being pushed down an empty hallway, glad that he at least had the good luck to get shot at a time when he would be less noticeable in the hospital, and that Wash had a contact at the hospital that didn’t mind patch jobs on the sly. Of course, the next second he was cursing himself for thinking his luck would ever turn good.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing here at this time of night? Show me your id card, doctor” Demanded a commanding voice down the hall. A dark haired man dressed in doctors robes had started towards them. The man’s eyes widened as he got closer “Hey, weren’t you-“

He cut off as the man pushing Mal turned tail and fled – along with Mal’s coin purse “ _Gou cao de hwen dan._ ”

“Hey wait!” The doctor broke into a jog after the man, but slowed to a stop near Mal when it was clear he couldn’t catch him, to give Mal a measuring glance.

“That man was fired two weeks back. He was under dosing patients on painkillers and anesthetic in order to sell them on the black market and to be perfectly frank, he wasn’t much good at his job either. I assume that means you’re here in a less than strictly legal capacity?”

_Go se_. His luck never ran good and he was always falling back on his last resort. Mal pulled his gun from his holster and shakily aimed it at the doctor with his left hand. “I suggest you make no sudden moves, doc. I tie you up in one of these rooms, you let me leave simple like and no one gets hurt, it’s the best course for everyone.”

The doctor looked not at all impressed “Oh _please_. Put the gun down, honestly. You’re sitting in a wheelchair, bleeding out from a shoulder wound that seems to have been made by older styled bullets that fragment, so you’ve got shrapnel still in your wound – which likely traveled quite a distance and will be difficult to extract in its entirety, blood still pouring out with no way to stop it, and you can’t even stand. I would estimate that without swift medical attention you’ll be dead in a maximum of two hours. I have just come off of a fourteen hour shift where one of my patients flatlined on the table and another needed several fingers reattached to find a nurse who was fired two weeks ago hauling some sort of criminal about the hospital so I am not currently in a fantastic mood. So what you need to do is put down that gun so I can fix you up like a civilized doctor, _dong ma_?” The man had leaned closer to Mal as he spoke his piece, and Mal gave him a deeply searching glance that swept from his disheveled black hair to his neat doctors scrubs to the intense fire in his tired blue eyes before lowering the gun.

Mal let himself be wheeled down to a room and laid up on a surgeon’s table, but kept a hold on his gun.

“I just need to administer a local anesthetic before I can begin” the doctor told Mal as he looked through the cabinets and turned back around with a syringe gun2 “This should just be a pinch, and then in about ten minutes there should be no pain when I get started.”

The doctor began laying out supplies on a surgical tray when Mal’s vision greyed out. _Yi da dwei bun chou roh-_

 

* * *

 

 

Mal woke up fuzzily – taking a minute to remember where he was before shooting straight up “BWAAA”

He was still in the hospital room, but he was partially undressed, his shoulder was swathed in clean white bandages, and his gun was no where in sight. And neither was that doctor.

He had just armed himself with a scalpel (just in case) when the door opened quiet like and the doctor walked in, absently scrolling through a pad and barely glancing at him, “Oh good, you’re up.”

“Ta ma duh - you tranqued me!”

“It was the only way I would be able to do my job in peace. You seem to be a difficult patient.”

“And you took my rutting gun!”

The doctor heaved a put upon sigh before unlocking a drawer, removing Mal’s gun, and slapping it into his palm. “Better now?” he asked with a quirked eyebrow, “Look, all I need to do now that you’re conscious is one more quick test for head injuries and then I can send you on your way, back to beating people up and getting shot, or whatever it is that you do.”

Mal allowed the doctor to flash a small light in his face before he got dressed and followed the doctor back to the back alley exit he had come in at.

Mal hesitated at the door “…about the payment…if you come back to my ship I can get you 15 platinum. Maybe even 25.” 25 if he didn’t buy any replacement parts or fresh food in the next couple weeks, that is.

The doctor gave him a strange look “Does it really look like I’m involved in many illicit dealings? I wouldn’t know where to go with platinum if I had it, and that’s assuming that I would need it. I’m from an affluent family and I’m a surgeon at the capital city hospital – does it seem like I suffer a deficit of credit?”

An actual decent human being. Well wasn’t that unlikely. Mal held out his hand “Malcolm Reynolds”

The doctor’s eyes widened in surprise at the name, but he slipped his hand into Mal’s all the same “Simon Tam” he returned with a soft smile.

**Author's Note:**

> 1-not sure how many platinums is appropriate – it seems that .4 credits = 1 platinum, but also that 1 platinum may be around our $10? So $300 may be accurate for getting sneak medical care? Maybe?  
> 2-I have no idea what the syringe gun thing that they use to drug people is called. Simon uses it on Kaylee in the very first episode and I don’t think they ever give it a name?


End file.
